High dietary salt worsens ischemic stroke risk

High dietary salt intake seen to worsen risk of ischemic strokes

The Heart.org, Feb 10, 2011 by Allison Gandey

Quote:

"In the Northern Manhattan Study, "people who consumed more than 4000 mg per day of sodium had more than double the risk of stroke compared with those who consumed less than 1500 mg," lead investigator Dr Hannah Gardener (University of Miami, FL) told reporters at a news conference here at the International Stroke Conference 2011 sponsored by the American Stroke Association (ASA)."

Full text: [www.theheart.org]

Isn't sodium the metal that must be kept under oil lest it burst into flame?
Anyway, nobody consumes it.
I can't read the article, but your excerpt reminds me of the definition of an expert, being one who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing.

William

In the study it doesn't say if those people had a good diet of fruits and vegetables, good proteins and no sugar/starchy foods.

It does say that the study allowed for a few things but I don't see anything about eating a good diet, or using celtic sea salt for regular table salt.

So many variables, I cannot accept that study.

L

From pp. 45 - 49, The Salt Solution (Herb Boynton, Mark F. McCarty, Richard D. Moore MD. PhD. 2001) (taken from an earlier topic):

"... clearly, salt is a risk factor for stroke even when blood pressure is normal. Louis Tobian and colleagues demonstrated this last point dramatically (see: L. Tobian and S. Hanlon, "High Sodium-Chloride Diets Injure Arteries and Raise Mortality Without Changing Blood Pressure".* Still more evidence of the stroke-salt connection comes from primitive cultures throughout the world, including the Yanomano Indians of Brazil, the Solomon Islanders, and the Kalahari Bushmen. Among these people, who eat almost no salt, stroke is remarkably rare. Conversely, in cultures switching from low-salt to high-salt diets, stroke rates - like hypertension rates - climb steadily.

How does salt cause stroke? We’ve already noted that salt increases blood pressure, putting more strain on the blood vessels. But this damage doesn’t account for all or even most strokes. Salt affects your body’s production of certain hormones, called natriuretic factors. . . These hormones, produced when you eat too much salt, flush sodium from your body. They do this by slowing down your kidney cells’ Na/K pumps that normally recycle up to 99 percent of the sodium filtered through your kidneys. By making these pumps work less efficiently and thus recycle less salt, natriuretic hormones quickly lower the sodium in your body. However, if you keep eating too much salt day after day, as most Americans do, your body pumps out a chronic excess of natriuretic hormones – and that’s not good. The problem is that all of your [~50 trillion] cells, not just your kidney cells, have Na/K pumps. Although it’s a good idea to slow down the pumps in your kidneys during a salt overload, it’s not a good idea to impair the performance of Na/K pumps in other cells.

The Na/K pumps normally work hard to maintain a healthy balance of sodium, potassium, calcium, and other substances inside and outside your cells. That’s particularly important for the delicate cells that line the insides of your blood vessels. Blood vessel cells with sluggish Na/K pumps are unhealthy cells – and, if they’re chronically exposed to an overload of pump-slowing hormones, they’re chronically unhealthy cells. Research indicates that natriuretic hormones, by making the Na/K pumps in your vessels work sluggishly, can initiate cellular changes that cause your blood vessels to constrict and become less elastic. This makes them easier prey for atherosclerosis, a condition in which plaque buildup in the arterial walls causes narrowing of the arteries’ diameter.

In summary, a high-salt diet causes your body to crank out excess levels of natriuretic hormones that, while lowering your salt levels, damage your blood vessels in a variety of ways. . . It’s no wonder that salt is so strongly linked to both stroke and heart attacks. Clearly, everyone who wants to avoid a stroke should cut down on excess salt – whether they suffer from hypertension or not. Salt reduction leads to lower blood pressure, eliminating a huge risk factor for stroke. But even when blood pressure is already normal, less salt translates into healthier blood vessels and brain cells, and thus to a decreased risk of stroke."
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*[hyper.ahajournals.org]

Hypertension, Vol 15, 900-903, Copyright © 1990 by American Heart Association

High sodium chloride diets injure arteries and raise mortality without changing blood pressure

L Tobian and S Hanlon
Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota Hospital, Minneapolis 55455.